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The Literary Club: Read an Original ALL’S FAIR Script

Welcome to a new Wildcard Wednesday! In honor of Independence Day — and to complement Musical Theatre Monday’s entry featuring a TV production that starred Broadway’s Bernadette Peters — this patriotic post offers readers the chance to enjoy a rare first draft script from the single-season Norman Lear sitcom All’s Fair, which ran for 24 episodes from 1976-’77 on CBS and featured Peters alongside Richard Crenna (Our Miss Brooks, The Real McCoys) as a pair of political opposites in a May-December romance. Pitched with the pithy hook of “what happens when William F. Buckley falls for Jane Fonda,” All’s Fair cast Crenna as Richard Barrington, a middle-aged conservative columnist who goes gaga over liberal photographer Charley Drake, a woman nearly 30 years his junior. Set in Washington D.C., the show’s other regulars included the secondary romantic couple, J.A. Preston (Hill Street Blues) as Richard’s assistant, Al, and Lee Chamberlin (The Electric Company) as Lucy, an on-screen reporter, along with Richard’s goofy Democrat friend, Senator Wayne Joplin, played by Jack Dodson (The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry R.F.D.), and Judith Kahan (Doc, Valerie) as Ginger, Charley’s free-spirited roommate, who had a habit for married congressmen. During the run, Richard took a job as advisor to incoming President Jimmy Carter — elected during the season — and met a new recurring character in Michael Keaton’s Lanny Wolf, the president’s joke writer.

Scheduled after Maude on Monday nights, All’s Fair shared many of the same scribes, like creators Rod Parker (The Jackie Gleason Show, Maude, Gimme A Break!, Empty Nest, Dear John), and Bob Schiller & Bob Weiskopf (I Love Lucy, Maude, All In TheFamily), the latter two of whom served as showrunners throughout the season. Other writers included Michael Elias (Head Of The Class, The Bill Cosby Show, The New Dick Van DykeShow), Albert E. Lewin (My Favorite Martian, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, The OddCouple), Michael Loman (All In The Family, The Cosby Show, Newhart, The HoganFamily), Tom Whedon (Alice, Benson, It’s A Living, The Golden Girls), Bud Wiser (One Day At A Time, Who’s The Boss?), Don Hinkley (I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster, The Carol Burnett Show, The Flip Wilson Show, The Muppet Show), and Robert Van Scoyk (Murder, SheWrote), with Ben Stein serving as a political consultant. Unfortunately, the post-Maude time slot proved unfavorable; opposite football on ABC and movies on NBC in the fall, the initially well-reviewed All’s Fair (an early favorite of industry insiders) quickly tanked in the ratings. Some opined that the May-December relationship was off-putting to female viewers, in particular, who tuned out at 9:30 when Maude ended. Even in the spring after football was over, the seriesremained in third place, finishing the season at #50 — far from where it needed to be to earn a renewal. (Maude, up against the same competition, came in at #30.)

Some of you may remember that I screened an episode several years ago at UCLA. (Read about it here.) At the time, I found that specific outing middling, but thought there could be greater potential in the rest of the series — I just needed to see more. As of this writing, I haven’t found a way to watch any other installments of All’s Fair, but I have been able to acquire rare first (and second) draft scripts of about six episodes — including the one I viewed at UCLA (“Love And Marriage (II)”). Based on such material — limited and raw and not quite enough to tell me everything I’d need in order to offer well-rounded commentary — I now have a slightly better picture of the show: it’s one of those concepts that works a lot better in theory than practice, for both the May-December and political constructs seem like great conflict-generators. And coming during an election year, when the goings-on in D.C. were on the public’s collective brain, it’s easy to see why All’s Fair — with its team of pros loading their scripts with snappy one-liners and its pair of stars inherently elevating said scripts — looked like a winner; heck, All’s Fair had all the makings for success…

But it’s too easy in shows like this to let the concept supplant actual character work, and as both Richard and Charley are defined by their differences, with little nuance in support, I’m afraid that they’re not quite as human as we’d like. (The actors shouldn’t have to supply this on their own.) In fact, the show almost feels like early Maude, when that series was essentially a rambling collection of political musings peppered by punchy jokes and a superb star… without the well-defined peripheral characterizations that helped bolster the comedy and make the show more worthy of emotional investment. Oh, sure, All’s Fair starts off being more relationship-based than early Maude (thanks to its premise), but part of Maude‘s self-preservation involved the concerted cultivation of a viable ensemble. The supporting characters here, particularly Al and Lucy, don’t get a fraction of that definition, and the ones who do are drawn broader, like Senator Joplin and Ginger, who have perspectives conducive to comedy (and biting comebacks from others), but not a lot of grounded truth to drive story. Instead, much of what the show narratively explores is either sitcom clichés about relationships — “Charley is jealous when Richard…,” etc. — or half-hearted political plots that are exciting now from a historical perspective, but must have appeared surface and trite at the time.

That noted, I haven’t seen (or read) enough to call my commentary conclusive. (I’d love to get ahold of the pilot, which inspired many to label All’s Fair the best new comedy of the season.) Instead, I’ll again praise the performers and the show’s sense of humor, and reiterate that it’s one I really wish would have worked. Until I see more and can offer an addendum, I’ll leave it there… and now present the main attraction: a first draft copy of the funniest installment I’ve read, “Happy Anniversary (I),” in which — shades of “Maude’s Dilemma” — Charley thinks she may be pregnant with Richard’s child. Written by Michael Loman with Schiller & Weiskopf, the teleplay is teeming with terrific laugh-out-loud jokes, even though the bloated narrative (the top of Act II drags) does invoke memories of that classic Maude (especially when talk inevitably comes around to abortion), and one can almost be positive that whatever happens in Part II, All’s Fair is neither marrying off its characters this soon (what do we think this is, Rhoda?) or saddling them with a baby… So, once again, this is an early draft and I’m sure it was tightened before the final version was directed by Bob Claver, taped on October 19, 1976, and broadcast by CBS as the eighth installment of the series on November 15, 1976. Enjoy!

Come back next Wednesday for another Wildcard post! And stay tuned Tuesday for Friends!

Thanks for remembering. Sorry I didn’t comment because I loved that post. Although I had seen a handful of those charts, I had not seen several others and I appreciate the data. It was enlightening. Too bad there isn’t an extended chart for 69-70 or 70-71.

Yes, I hope we’ll one day get that information. But it makes sense why the trades deemed the data irrelevant and not worth publishing at the time — the networks’ programming decisions those two years appeared to ignore rankings and totals. (I say “appeared” because I think the total viewer stats still mattered… a lot!)

Thanks for this. I remember watching the series first-run and I have vague memories of seeing this particular episode. I never thought I’d get that back. Thank you.

Your blog is the best. The stuff you’ve had lately—LOVE THY NEIGHBOR, THAT’S LIFE, A TOUCH OF GRACE, the BACHELOR AT LAW pilot, BAREFOOT IN THE PARK—it’s simply amazing. I never know what to expect, but you dig up rarities that nobody else seems to have. Anything else like this in the pipeline?

I appreciate your kind words. Most of the forgotten series scheduled for coverage over the next few months are from the same era as the Sitcom Tuesday shows we’re featuring (FRIENDS and then NEWSRADIO — so, late ’90s), but we haven’t even scratched the surface of the ’60s-’70s rarities I’m fortunate to have — both videos and texts (and audios, too). So, expect more gems like this here soon…

Fascinating! I love Bernadette Peters. Always heard about this one and remember hearing about it but never actually saw it. I don’t know why or if true.I watched MAUDE that year. So Maybe I just blocked ALL’S FAIR out. Huh..

And Norman Lear! I know you did several of his big ones. Any chance you might cover some of his forgotten comedies now???

I wasn’t planning on announcing this, but I actually have a complete run of scripts — all 13 — for HOT L BALTIMORE, which I intend to discuss at some point. I screened an episode at UCLA several years ago (and blogged about it), but it was disappointing. I’m hoping a more comprehensive look will temper my apprehension.

Thanks for the article about this sitcom. Whenever I see images from sitcoms around this time, I have to stop and ask, “Is that hairstyle legitimate for that year or was this sitcom a period piece?” I’m assuming that this wasn’t a period piece and that Bernadette Peters’s hairstyle was authentic for 1976-1977?

That’s correct — the contemporaneous election of President Carter was fodder for several stories (and before that, jokes) and the series prided itself on remaining topical, shooting episodes only three (on average) weeks before intended broadcast.

your musings on the show match my recollections of it. I remember it as being well produced and performed, but a bit tiresome. By this time All in the Family, Maude and others had done political commentary in sitcom, and that, with the continual ups and downs of the romance made it seem too repetitious.